You can render a Smarty template instead of a Twig one simply by using the .smarty extension in the template name instead of .twig. The controller below renders the index.html.smarty template:
// src/Acme/HelloBundle/Controller/HelloController.php
public function indexAction($name)
{
return $this->render('AcmeHelloBundle:Hello:index.html.smarty', array('name' => $name));
}
Like Symfony2 PHP renderer or Twig, Smarty provides template inheritance.
Template inheritance is an approach to managing templates that resembles object-oriented programming techniques. Instead of the traditional use of {include ...} tags to manage parts of templates, you can inherit the contents of one template to another (like extending a class) and change blocks of content therein (like overriding methods of a class.) This keeps template management minimal and efficient, since each template only contains the differences from the template it extends.
Example:
layout.html.smarty:
<html>
<head>
<title>{block name=title}Default Page Title{/block}</title>
</head>
<body>
{block name=body}{/block}
</body>
</html>
mypage.html.smarty:
{extends 'file:AcmeHelloBundle:Default:layout.html.smarty'}
{block name=title}My Page Title{/block}
{block name=body}My HTML Page Body goes here{/block}
Output of mypage.html.smarty:
<html>
<head>
<title>My Page Title</title>
</head>
<body>
My HTML Page Body goes here
</body>
</html>
Instead of using the file:AcmeHelloBundle:Default:layout.html.smarty syntax you may use file:[WebkitBundle]/Default/layout.html.smarty which should be, performance wise, slightly better/faster (since this is a native Smarty syntax).:
{extends 'file:[WebkitBundle]/Default/layout.html.smarty'}
To load a template that lives in the app/Resources/views directory of the project you should use the following syntax:
{extends 'file:base.html.smarty'}
Please see Symfony2 - Template Naming and Locations to learn more about the naming scheme and template locations supported in Symfony2.
{include} functions work the same way as the examples above.:
{include 'file:WebkitBundle:Default:layout.html.smarty'}
{include 'file:[WebkitBundle]/Default/layout.html.smarty'}
{include 'file:base.html.smarty'}
Warning
Note the usage of the file: resource in the {extends} function. We need to declare the resource even if the Smarty class variable $default_resource_type is set to 'file'. This is required because we need to trigger a function to handle ‘logical’ file names (only mandatory if you are using the first syntax). Learn more about resources in the Smarty Resources webpage.
Note
The .html.smarty extension can simply be replaced by .smarty. We are prefixing with .html to stick with the Symfony convention of defining the format (.html) and engine (.smarty) for each template.